 the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Saturday afternoon. Hopefully all of you are having a fantastic weekend and looking forward to the rest of the weekend and back to work on Monday. All right, so today we're going to do another episode of Capitalism 101, and I thought, what better than to do an episode on probably one of the biggest objections you hear over and over and over again in every talk you do about capitalism but what about monopolies? Doesn't capitalism create monopolies? So we'll talk about that. We'll talk primarily in the context of the Biden administration's massive antitrust push. So we'll talk about the push and we'll talk about what's the issues with monopolies, why it's such a big deal, and why capitalism doesn't actually create monopolies. So we will do that in a second. Two quick news items. One is, I don't know if you saw this, but Elon Musk won his securities fraud case. So the jury came in and said he was not guilty of committing fraud for that tweet where he said he had secured funding. So, you know, jury has spoken. I'll leave it to the rule of law and to the justice system that are good for Elon Musk. I mean, that is a major hassle off of Tesla and him. Second, big news item. It's just getting bigger every day. It's the balloon. The balloon is getting, I guess, is getting bigger. No, but they keep finding new ones, right? So there was one in South America. That one somehow disappeared. Now there's one in North Carolina near Charlotte. I don't know if it's the same one. I don't think it's traveled from Montana to Charlotte so quickly. Anyway, we'll see if that one disappears. I think we're going to be citing lots of balloons, like party balloons, all kinds of balloons, all over the skies. The Chinese are invading with balloons. It's happening. Balloons everywhere. Okay. Man, this has turned into just a comical ridiculous escalation. You know, there were Republicans calling Biden weak for not shooting it down and not, I guess, declaring war in China. I don't know what they expect Biden to do. Biden now is saying, oh, we're going to shoot it down, but they don't know how to shoot it down. It's tricky to shoot down a balloon that's over 60,000 feet up in the air. Air missiles are not really accustomed to that altitude. Dynamics are not quite fitted. I guess they have 22 can reach 50,000 square. 50,000 square. I don't know where the square comes from. 50,000 feet, it would probably go to 22, but that's risking pilots. That's risking the plane. It's not designed to go to 60, 70, 80, 90, 100,000 square feet. Square feet. Feet. High. You know, so we could shoot a Patriot missile, but no, those missiles are not designed to go that high. And on top of that, all these missiles are designed to hit solid targets. This balloon, for most of these missiles, looks like a cloud. So it's not easy to get this balloon. I get it. I'm sure there's a technology out there. I'm sure they'll fire something. One of the problems is if they fire an air missile and the missile misses, where does it land? That's part of the problem. A laser would do it, and maybe they have those. Hopefully they do. You'd think that the United States has the technology to shoot down ballistic missiles very high up, rather than waiting for them to get very low down. I guess not. Or maybe they do, and maybe they don't want to reveal that they have that technology. I'm sure they're using jamming technology to jam their electronics. But symbolically, I think the American people now are demanding, at least the Republicans are demanding, that this thing be shut down for, I don't know, for, to show the Chinese. I mean, it's comical. I'll have to say, I'm sure they're jamming the thing so there's no sensitive intelligence being accumulated there. It would be nice to be able to capture the balloon and actually get the equipment that's on the balloon in order to figure out what exactly the Chinese are accumulating and what their technology is and what they're using. That would be the ideal, rather than knocking it out of the sky, would be to actually capture it. But again, not easy, not easy at those altitudes to catch it, but I find all the headlines, everybody's talking about this. And again, people are now seeing balloons everywhere. And if anybody wants to invade us, I guess the way to invade is with balloons. But it is, it is funny and entertaining, a little scary, because the level of political and military discourse is so shallow. It's kind of scary what happens if something real would happen? I mean, and can these idiots escalate this into actual war with China, which nobody really wants, I think? I think none of us want. Not a good idea. Chinese have big, nasty nuclear missiles. They also have hypersonic missiles that we don't have, and we probably don't have a weapon to knock them down. So the whole thing, the whole thing is sad, comical, pathetic, scary, worrisome, and add to that whatever you will. But I thought of calling the show, putting balloon in the title and maybe getting some clickbait and getting some people to come, because it's everywhere in the news, and I'm sure everybody's intrigued by what's going on with the balloon. But I decided, no, this is going to be about antitrust. We'll leave the balloon for my news update when I do that on Monday. There'll be more news on the balloon. So anyway, that was my quick update on the news. Musk wins the lawsuit, and the balloon is still flying, as far as I can tell. It hasn't been shot down, but they're sure trying to figure out what to do with it. And all the China hawks, all the people who want to want to go to war with China, I guess, or want to just be seen more than anything else, the virtue signaling stuff from China out in droves. All right, forget about the balloon, forget about Musk, although we will bring up Musk later because he is, there's no question that he is an even monopolist. So we will talk about him later on. And if I don't, then ask me a question about Tesla and Musk, and SpaceX, I mean, and everything else that he does is almost all monopolies. Okay, so ask me about that. Remember to use the super chat to ask, I can get rid of these, ask questions, and support the show, and keep the show going, keep the show financed, value for value. Those of you who do not use the super chat because you're not listening live, or you just don't want to use the super chat, or you just, you can support the show on a monthly basis. Patreon, subscribe star, and you're on bookshow.com, so I support all venues in which you can do that. There are all kinds of perks for different levels of support. So please, if you're not already a supporter of the show, please consider supporting the show. I will also note that I lost a number of supporters because Action Jackson here made a short video of my commentary on vaccine conspiracy theories, and that I lost a number of subscribers as a consequence of that. Of course, it's not Christian's fault. I asked him to make a short video of that. Anything I can do to rub it into people who probably shouldn't be following me anyway. There'll be a lot more, I think there're going to be quite a few more of those vaccine conspiracy theory short videos. So there'll be plenty of opportunities to lose subscribers as we move into, as we move into the future. Yeah, so Action Jackson is telling me I need to do another show on Peter Zain, Zeehan, because so somebody did a short video of my commentary on Peter's book, or maybe Action Jackson did the short video, somebody else put it on their channel, on some other channel, not our channel, not my channel, so I don't get any, we're not getting any ad revenue from this video. And on this other channel, on this other person's channel, the video has now 94, 98,000 views. So they just reposted the short video, yeah, okay, so they reposted the short video that Action Jackson created, put it on their channel, and they get 98,000 views. I don't get 98,000 views on our short videos. So yeah, people are interested in Peter Zain. Yes, I will be doing more. I don't know what more to say about him, so I'll look for some new material. I mean, he is basically going around saying it's the end of globalization, it's the end of the world, the world is ending. I'm skeptical, but we can engage with that, we can engage with that somewhat. All right, let's see, draw a line, line in the sand, stop distracting me. Ooh, Michael, thank you. And there's Michael distracting me with it. Yes, I'll get to that, I promise. I was going to do that as a show on Tuesday, make that a show. Action Jackson sent me the video, this is MrBeast paying 1,000 people to cure their blindness, but you guys will do anything to distract me from capitalism. My plan is to do a show on that, or at least have a segment of the show on Tuesday night. So yeah, $100 is always distracting. $250 is even more distracting, and the $500 that come in once in a while are even more distracting. But those are the kind of distractions I like. It's the $2, $5 distractions that, you know, I like all financial supports. I appreciate everybody. All right, let's jump in. So draw a line, let's shift to capitalism. And I think this is really an important topic, although I don't expect many people to care to watch this video, which is one of the sad, I think one of the sad, testaments to the culture in which we live. The reality is that the Biden administration today, maybe some of the most damaging things that the Biden administration is doing, although to some extent they're continuing here on the Trump administration, and they are getting bipartisan support, which adds to the scariness of it. But maybe some of the most damaging things the Biden administration is doing right now is in the area of antitrust, is in the area of so-called anti-competitive practices. They're doing this on multiple fronts. Pretty much every one of the regulatory agencies in the government is involved in this. This is a massive, massive, unprecedented really since maybe maybe the Progressive Arrow or FDR. This is an unprecedented assault on American business. And sadly, at least when it comes to assault on big tech, it's an assault that is supported by many Republicans. But the reality is that the U.S. economy, as we've said, is relatively strong. It is amazingly flexible in spite of the nonsense that the Fed has done over the last 20, 40 years, in spite of the nonsense that is coming out of Washington, in spite of all the government spending. The American economy seems pretty strong and resilient and flexible and managed. But this kind of assault on American business is going to crush that flexibility and crush its ability to deal with the changing environment, the changing political environment, the changing monetary environment, the changing interest rate environment. And truly, this is one of the ways in which the Biden administration is truly going after business. And this is one of the most damaging things that it's doing. I can't think of anything much more damaging than this. And I'll just note this and then we'll get into the actual issue. Republicans are so focused on the cultural wars, are so focused on woke and everything else. And you are. You are. Watch this. Again, I would have a much bigger audience on this if I was talking about some woke thing, some way other. But the reality is that the oppositions of the Biden administration, the oppositions to the left is so focused now on cultural issues that it's basically the Biden administration faces no opposition to its onslaught, to its major onslaught of American business, to its attempt to really bring central planning and controls and to every aspect of American business. Republicans have allowed some of the worst people one can imagine to be, to head some of the agencies that are out there. And as a consequence, they are doing what they promised. They are fully engaged. That is, the left is fully engaged on trying to bring their theories of competition to the forefront and to an assault on American business. For about 40 years, I'd say from the Reagan administration from the early 1980s through to probably the end of the Obama administration, the beginning of the Trump administration, there had been basically a political consensus supported by the Supreme Court that basically said we should be very cautious with antitrust. We shouldn't use it too frequently. And generally, in order for an antitrust case to make sense, we have to show real harm to consumers. This is sometimes called the Bork doctrine. This is, you remember, Bork was nominated by I think it was Reagan to the Supreme Court and luckily, God, he's awful. But he would have been one of the worst justices possible. Luckily, he failed and he couldn't get enough Democrats to vote for him. And he was never made it to the Supreme Court. But it's called his doctrine because I guess some of his cases in the appellate courts that have been reaffirmed by the Supreme Court basically indicated that you can't show harm to consumers. Don't bring an antitrust lawsuit to us because we're not going to pass it. So that's where antitrust, and as a consequence, if you look at antitrust, antitrust was huge in the 20s and 30s. Antitrust was huge in the 50s, 60s, 70s. And antitrust has been a lot quieter. Fewer antitrust cases. I mean, the big one you know, Microsoft in the 90s. But this just being, if you look at just the straight stats, Govman has used antitrust laws less and less over the last 40 years since the early 1980s in order to go after business. This is now completely changed. During that period, there's been a number of academics, one of which now runs the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for approving mergers and responsible for taking antitrust action. Her name is Khan, K-H-A-N. But there's been a whole slew of academics, particularly in the law, academics in the law, at law schools, in law journals, writing about this fact that antitrust has been pursued less and talking about the evil that that constitute. They've been urging antitrust regulators to increase antitrust enforcement, to increase the application of antitrust to various businesses. And over the last, I'd say five, six, seven years, both among Republicans and Democrats, there has been a general consensus that antitrust law needs to be applied to big tech. And then the question is, how do we do it, particularly given some of the legal precedents? How do we get this so that not only can we apply it, but that the courts will uphold it, and that we can win our cases. And a lot has been, a lot of effort, a lot of ink, a lot of legal thought, a lot of intellectual firepower has been devoted to this. And what is interesting, as almost always happens in politics, politics ultimately is a consequence of this legal thinking, of the thinking that goes on in academia. I mean, remember that all your CRT is a legal doctrine, it's a doctrine that comes out of the law and then has come into culture and into politics in a major way. But it starts, it almost always starts with some really, really bad academic intellectual who then brings these ideas forward and then, and they get implemented politically and cause the disasters that they cause. So, antitrust law right now is being enforced, it's being applied in new and relatively creative ways, ways that harken back to the progressive era and to the new deal. Now, I'll get to a broader kind of philosophical discussion of antitrust in a little bit. I do want to highlight kind of how aggressive the Biden administration is, because again, of all the things Biden is doing, this one might be the most damaging on the one hand, although it is at the regulatory basis, it can be reversed if we get a different president, but Biden could be in another term and then this could really get entrenched in the bureaucracy. But the two facets is, one, unbelievably damaging. He is unbelievably committed to it and two, faces no opposition. There's just nobody really interested in the topic. There's just nobody really talking about it because everybody's distracted by the culture war, everybody's distracted by inflation, everybody's distracted by other things, yet this might be more important than all of that. In July 9th, 2021, Biden signed an executive order that is one of the most sweeping changes to domestic policy with regard and certainly with regard to business since FDR, since FDR. In this executive order, he outlined 72 different actions that the federal government, the regulatory agencies are going to take to rein in their quote, power of business. 72. Indeed, they are divided by the different agencies that they're going to have to do this and I think we're talking about 12 or 13 different agencies, anyway from the FDIC with regard to banks, the FTC with regard to antitrust more broadly, health and human services with regard to health care issues. I mean, every single agency all geared towards combating what is viewed as anti-competitive practices, breaking on monopolies and as it applies to every single area of American business out there. The idea, the idea that antitrust has always held up as a kind of platonic ideal, the ideal is a false but very popular. If you've taken an economics 101 class, you've learned this ideal, the ideal that kind of frames the whole issue is this ideal of perfect competition. Now, I don't know how much you guys know about the perfect competition model, but the competition model basically assumes that the ideally competitive market is a market and ideal in a sense of places are just right. They are enough to keep the business going, but where the majority of the benefits accrue to the consumers, where competition has basically driven profits down to as close to zero as possible and as a consequence of that driving profit as close to zero as possible, all the benefits accrue to consumers or in other, you could argue, to employees, to other entities other than the business. Perfect competition model assumes that all businesses are the same, that they have nothing special. Perfect competition model assumes that they all have the same information, the same technology, the same ability, the same skills. It's just perfection. In other words, perfect competition model is the application of egalitarianism to business. It's just like egalitarianism can imagine in their dreams or in their nightmares a world in which everybody is the same and therefore all outcomes are the same and therefore everything is the same. These egalitarians apply to business, imagine a world in which all businesses are the same, all prices are the same, all prices are as low as they can possibly be and this is kind of a result that comes from classical economics. It's a result that the original economists who came up with it just view as kind of a general approximation because in order to get this result they have to do a huge amount of simplification and they know they're simplifying, they're abstracting away from reality, all kinds of things just to make this easy mathematically to show you what happens when this fantasy world exists and it's really to show the relationship between profits and consumers and businesses in some vague way. I mean I think today in particular it's completely useless. I would cut out the whole section in the Economic 101 textbook about perfect competition monopolies and throw it out and shred it and throw it into the trash but classical economics developed this. These were not economists were antagonistic to the free markets at all but it is being picked up not as some rough simplification just to learn a few concepts, understand a few minor things but as an egalitarian ideal. In the perfect competition model monopolist is one that controls an industry therefore can set prices significantly higher than in the quote perfect competition model, you know perfect competition marketplace but those but those profits have no quote social value because he already has a monopoly. The monopolist is not incentivized to improve, the monopolist is not incentivized to lower prices, the monopolist is just the monopolist adjusts you know they're incentivized to squeeze out as much profit as they can and it all goes to the bottom line ago goes to line the pocket of its owners and there is no quote value to this they form monopolies are evil and bad and the whole idea is you break up monopolies in order to create these smaller homogeneous entities that benefit consumers. So the perfect competition model in economics is probably one of the if not the one of the most destructive concepts ideas that economists have come up with and everybody knows every teacher every every economist knows that it is wrong that it doesn't describe the world but it's a platonic ideal in their view it's a platonic ideal there's no mechanism for setting prices because prices are just given marginal utility equals marginal some marginal cost or something like that it's just it's just set it's just determined to allow for the smallest amount of profit that will allow the firm to continue to survive but note what's lacking from the perfect more competition model what's lacking is an entrepreneur what's lacking is innovation what's lacking is the fact that every single business in the world is trying to create something uniquely theirs to differentiate themselves from the competition because that's how you make money that is it's true that if everybody's exactly the same if all business is exactly the same then a in a true market they would merge but if they were exactly the same yeah i mean a we wouldn't have innovation we wouldn't have entrepreneur we wouldn't have any of this indeed innovation is a product of a constant attempt to differentiate and innovation doesn't go away when you gain market share the idea again of the perfect competition model is that monopolies when they have certain size don't fear competition but we know in reality that that's not true nothing about these models corresponds to reality and yet fundamentally these models drive almost all thinking out there about business competition and monopolies and sadly even among supporters of free markets you hear often the argument well capitalism is about competition no it's not competition is something that falls out of capitalism it's something that is a result of setting up a particular legal system and and protecting property rights people will compete but people will also collaborate and indeed there's more collaboration than there is competition in capitalism there's massive collaboration if you think about trade as win-win and therefore collaborative that's the essence of capitalism this is of capitalism is the win-win relationships this is of capitalism is that collaborative relationships with your suppliers with your customers with your employees and even sometimes with your competitors i i i like to give the example of apple buys and has in its history bought a lot of the things that go into the iphone from samsung even though samsung is a competitor nothing about the perfect competition model nothing about what you study in economics 101 about the competition model is right it's all wrong and it frames the issues from economic perspective as really in a disastrous way it creates a platonic ideal that cannot be achieved should not be achieved it would be a model to achieve of complete equality of information knowledge competence ability it ignores the fact that we have different abilities it ignores the fact that we have different competent competencies it ignores the fact that some people are better than others some companies better some companies innovative it ignores the fact that we're different not better just different and if we could have an apple and a samsung competing with one another both producing great products and appealing to different parts of the market basically the competition model that is taught in every single econ class is anti-reality and yet it dominates the thinking about competition and about markets and it drives the thinking or at least i don't know if it's thinking it drives the rationalization that people have this is how they rationalize it if you argue against some of these people around a particular antitrust or around a particular law and regulation they will refer back but we're just trying to increase competition as if competition is some kind of standard of virtue it's not freedom is a standard innovation progress wealth creation of standards and those indeed depend on the ability to differentiate yourself the ability to make large profits the ability to do better than your competitors now you know peter teal in one of his books i forget which one he talks about the fact that every company every company that's founded wants to be a monopoly now his his view of what a monopoly is and we'll get to what the conventional view of monopoly is but his view of monopoly is have something that differentiates you so that you can charge a high profit margin see you would say apple has a monopoly over what over over the brand named apple and it does nobody else can use the brand named apple disney has a monopoly over disney and they're valuable they're really really valuable if you slap the apple logo on a product its value goes up immediately just by the fact that you put that logo on it now so there's truth to what peter teal is saying absolutely i don't like the fact that he uses monopoly well what is a monopoly well the historical historical uh origins of monopoly is a grant given to you by the government the king that gives you exclusivity in a particular field and that bars by rule of law others from competing with you and in that sense there are very few monopolies because there are very few laws that give that kind of exclusivity the post office is a monopoly it was a world charter the east india company i think was the first maybe the others who came before that but um only you can do trade with east indies nobody can compete with you even under those circumstances interestingly enough there were massive black markets where people did compete with the monopoly but monopoly is something granted to you by government by government now note again the confusion that people hold and this is a philosophical point that's really really important when we discuss issues around monopolies and around antitrust and that is the confusion between two forms of power that this whole issue around monopolies illustrates that is the confusion between economic power and political power political power is the power of the gun political power is the power of coercion political power is imposed and if you you know for example the king gives you monopoly over a trade route it has given you political power because if anybody tries to compete with you their government using the navy will sink their ships will put them in jail the government using force using coercion eliminates your competition now that is political power political power is the power of the gun the power of force the power of coercion economic power is the power to trade economic power is voluntary power it's i have a lot of economic power because a lot of people want to trade with me i have a little bit of economic power because not many people want to trade with me i'm not creating enough value for the people out there and therefore we have less economic power so the fundamental difference here is coercion and not coercion voluntary versus forced and what happens constantly is you get a conflation of those two you get people confusing political and economic power to the extent amazon has no i mean has no political power it can't force you to buy their goods it can't force companies to store their data on their cloud the reason amazon is so successful is because they have the reason they have so much economic power is because they provide a service that people want to use voluntarily in trade notice when people talk about the kind of power that amazon has or the power that google has or the power that apple has if you really think about what it is that they're talking about they talk they're talking about they frame it in terms of political power it's ominous it's coercive it's imposing you have no choices i mean the idea that you have a choice not to use amazon is mind-boggling to people that's not a choice well of course it's a choice in their minds if they have any they have a god given right to use amazon and they demand to do so how do you suggest that they could live without using it so uh economic power political power very different government deals with political power economic power is just a power of success at the end of the day the attempt to break up businesses the attempt to limit business mergers limit business activities in the name of competition is just to attack and to limit and to constrain voluntary economic power it's an attempt to penalize the most successful businessman in our world so it's one of the most despicable things the government does because it goes after the best it goes after the best now you know i've often talked about this in a free market in a true free market there are no monopolies because the government hasn't granted anybody anything any exclusivity JD Rockefeller didn't receive any favors from the government in building his business in the 19th century to dominate the kerosene the oil market he did it through voluntary activity by buying out his competitors and by innovating and innovating and innovating and innovating constantly and driving his competitors out of business because they couldn't compete he had economy economies of scale and he invested massively in innovation now prices every single year went down quality went up every single year exactly the opposite of what the so-called theory tells us because the theory is bogus why did prices go down or partially because Rockefeller wanted to expand his market because he was proud of what he's producing because he wanted to make the best product possible to him because he's a real entrepreneur who wants to produce something great the idea that entrepreneurs are only motivated by money i mean money's a great motivation is wrong they're also motivated by pride by wanting to do create make something great and of course because they make create produce something great their profits last longer so the two are completely integrated they're not in conflict and also because Rockefeller realized that in a free market which he was living in the freest maybe that's ever been there are always competitors always there was oil being refined in russia that could potentially be imported into the united states what's his name Edison ultimately by electrifying by using electricity to light the world drove the kerosene market to zero but by keeping prices of refining so low Rockefeller could find a new use for all the oil he was refining whether it was the internal combustion engine or ultimately plastics or all the other gazillion uses that we have for oil that were made possible because of the economy's scale and a massive innovation that Rockefeller and others produced every one of the cases that's been brought have been against companies in the sense of antitrust have been bogus over and over and over again and yet this fear a big business this fear a big business being the same as big government which you see both on the right and on the left is deeply rooted and international it's everywhere in the world i don't know of a country today that does not have and does not enforce antitrust laws i don't think i think there are many countries that haven't in the past but i think today it's pretty universal indeed it's when when when countries come to the united states and ask oh we want to become more capitalist we want to become more free market oriented what are the things we have to do one of the first things american politicians and economists and political scientists tell them is you need to establish antitrust laws you need to put in place antitrust laws in other words you need to penalize you're more successful people so i'd say two of the big fallacies two of the big fallacies the drive antitrust the drive and again these are for the people actually doing this stuff these are rationalizations more than real reasons but one is the confusion between economic power and political party that power that goes back to car marks and maybe even before that and the second is comes out a classical economic theory the the perfect competition model those are the two and they're both wrong so just to give you a sense of you know give you a sense of well let me do this think about think about the power that antitrust laws give politicians and regulatory agencies they have a blanket mission to increase competition how when to what extent it's completely in many respects up to them and to the courts but it's not clear how the courts should rule they're no objective criteria for this stuff when is a company a monopoly 50 percent market share 70 percent market share 90 percent market share 10 percent market share but it's not just monopolies when is collusion collusion collusion is when businessmen get together and coordinate well if tech companies coordinate about a wi-fi standards which they do they all coordinate you know they have a particular entity the court is that collusion did they need an exclusion from antitrust laws you know that the professional sports leagues have exclusions from antitrust laws so that they can create a cartel in a sense so that to suppress competition so politicians get to decide when you can and when you can't what is okay to collude around standards for wi-fi what's not okay to collude around prices i guess or other things that politicians don't like what size is too big i don't know for a long long time tesla basically had a hundred percent of the electric vehicle market in the united states is that a monopoly do you consider you know oil-based you know fossil fuel-based transportation means competition to electric cars or is electric car category in and of itself well let me let me put it this way as long as the united states government doesn't want to go after tesla for antitrust reasons it's not a category by itself it's part of automobiles when the day comes when they want to go after tesla electric vehicles will become a category of themselves and then they'll say who you've got 70 percent of the electric car market we need to do something about this note the tesla in january lowered prices of teslas dramatically to get them out to sell them well when other companies have done similar things antitrust antitrust division has gone after them for you know for um undermining competition for trying to drive competitors out of business when foreign companies do it it's called dumping and we've had all kinds of laws to protect us from companies lowering prices too low and and you could spit what what what really important here is to get the arbitrariness of this the total power that politicians have they get to decide when to go after tesla and when not to go after tesla they get to decide if google's a monopoly or not a monopoly there's no i mean they pretend that there's some legal standards here but there are no real objective legal standards for this this is at the whim of our politicians does apple have a monopoly over iphone it certainly has in terms of uh phones smartphones it has i don't know a significant percentage of the market when does that significant percentage become a monopoly and you know what is a monopoly it turns out what is clearly a monopoly is apple's app store the app store is a monopoly because you can't compete with the app store in order to get an app onto an iphone it has to come through the app store that's how apple is designed the iphone it's apps and it's apps is that now a monopoly because apple basically controls a hundred percent of the app store well yeah i mean that's what the government is doing the by administration is on the verge of suing apple they just they just came out with a document that's saying that apple is monopolizing the app store business of course it is at some point and that that needs to be broken up they're just following in line with the europeans who have been going after apple and google and everybody else for years now and a fall further along in trying to disrupt the business model of big tech than is uh the us administration so they're just trying to catch up but you know it truly is massive i'll give you an example you know justice department managed to score big legal victory when they challenged the merger between simon is shuster and penguin because if simon is shuster and penguin would have been that business would have been merged they would have only been four book publishers in the united states what's the right number five twenty two four three two one did they count amazon did they count self-publishing how do you decide who gets to decide well i guess a judge does and and the bureaucrats do they get to decide i mean they've just filed a lawsuit against google they're actually just so you know they are one two three four five six seven seven antitrust actions against google two in the united states no three in the united states one that the trump administration did one the texas state attorney general did just so you don't just so you don't mistake this as just a democratic thing the texas is accused of uh of you know taking in private data without consent right supposedly we'll see um no this is a different one these are pending ones sorry these are pending seven pending ones that are the ones that have already been filed there's one from texas one from trump and now there's one from the justice department that was just filed accused of abusing its monopoly power and digital advertising to disadvantaged competitors of course they're going to disadvantage competitors isn't that what competition means i'm going to do everything in my power to make a better product so that competitors can't compete with me isn't that the whole point of competition is to do better than the other guy which means to disadvantage them and didn't i show you a graph like a month ago maybe three weeks ago of the fact that google's percentage of online advertising is going down and it actually amazons is going up and there's a bunch of others that are going up tiktok is going up and google is actually going down and yet the justice department is suing them now as they share digital advertising because the competition is actually going down but there is an action action from the uh the european union a number of actions from the european union probably five six uh from india i i mean every country in the world is going after google then amazon um they're about to sue amazon for this idea that amazon sells products that amazon sells directly to you and then amazon also is a platform for third parties to sell you stuff and amazon is competing with parties on its own platform and some government bureaucrat i get so angry about these things some government bureaucrat doesn't think that's fair doesn't think that's right who the hell are they to decide why is it any of their business and then apple over the app store got a number of lawsuits including in europe the uh you know you know the the chip technology apple is restricting rivals from accessing its chip technology i emphasize its property rights no no you have to open up you've got an unfair advantage because you're designing better chips than other people there is an investigation uh in the uk the uk the conservative government in the uk into apple's dominance of the apple mobile browser safari when you buy an iphone the default browser is safari that is not fair apple should give one of their competitors an opportunity to have their browsers the default browser now you can go in and change it you can make you can make google's browser the default browser or anybody else's browser the default browser but no the government wants to tell apple that they can't make their own there's an interest just action in brazil there's uh you know everywhere and then of course there's facebook um the federal the federal state commission is challenging their acquisition of virtual reality start start up within because it's anti-competitive maybe they actually make virtual reality a thing because they'll have the resources to invest in it so all of this is to put it mildly none of the government's business no individual rights are being violated by apple including their own browser indeed if apple banned all other browsers from its phone no individual rights are being violated none of these cases involve actual things that the government should be involved in but note that the by administration claims that there's unfair competition in prescription prescription drug patents internet marketplaces occupational licensing real estate listings i don't know what occupational licensing has to do with any of this i'm just reading off of an article personal data collection and surveillance that's a big one that they want to break up the so-called monopolies that control all your data you give it to them there's now a lawsuit from the fdc again 2020 this is a trump administration lawsuit that is questioning past acquisitions that were approved by the fdc in the past so the government is now claiming that they can retroactively question acquisitions that they once approved in this case they want facebook to spin off instagram and whatsapp this is this was the trump administration doing this again this is not a democrat versus republican thing that by the way is something that after a few up to the by the ministry up to sorry the obama administration the government did not do this retroactive stuff this is new this is trump biden trump biden this is a whole new approach to antitrust a huge commentary on this uh i guess ticket master on live nation emerging and many many of the concerts out there you will only have one place to buy tickets ticket master and and the government is stepping in here to protect you the consumer for being gouged by ticket master oh and then there's a whole thing yes this uh the the fee thing let's see do i have an article on this i don't know if i if i download an article on this but the the bite administration is big now on hidden fees they want to ban all fees you know overdraft fees from banks that's no good they want to lower it they want to tell the banks you can't charge 30 you have to charge eight dollars now overdraft is expensive for the banks do you think they're not going to find a way to get the fee from you another way no resort fees at hotels god forbid god forbid hotels can't charge you a resort fee it's a hidden fee the government is opposed to it so um uh they're going to ban resort fees you think hotel room charges won't go up hotel room prices won't go up but look at the minutia that they're getting into they want to dictate exactly what every business charges you and how much and i mean this is a massive push with the bite administration i i don't know how to can't overestimate underestimate this overestimate over emphasizes can't over emphasize this this is a massive massive push for central planning embraced by both democrats and republicans led by primarily leftist law professors led right now by the bite administration they want to get their tentacles into every aspect of business they want every major decision in american businesses today to have to be approved by them the powers to be the swamp that we were supposed to empty and there's some disagreement about whether the swamp animal should be blue or should be red but everybody agrees the swamp animal should control us and and you know not only is this morally offensive it is economically destructive it is taking the you know the american economy which is an amazing thing it really is it's the and it's bewildering i mean on the economic freedom index i just saw on the heritage foundation economic freedom index america's rank number 22 in the world it's not very free we do not have a very free economy but somehow there is still an american spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation and flexibility and because we have different states with different rules there may be some states that are free and somehow in spite of all the stupidity coming out of washington and out of state houses the american economy keeps chugging along and innovating and and breaking new ground and creating wealth and making our lives better and these people want to kill it they want to kill every aspect in every element in it under capitalism under capitalism there is no antitrust law under capitalism there is no such thing as anti-competitive anything under capitalism as long as you're not violating rights as long as you're not stealing lying cheating defrauding the government has no business in your business indeed iron man considered the antitrust laws the most immoral laws in the books and the first ones to go if you had a rational administration markets work not because it's mystical but because entrepreneurs make them work now because spontaneous order in invisible hand but because entrepreneurs make the market work they compete with one another they innovate they want to be successful they seek profit and pride and we should defend the last remnants of markets that we still have in the world we should defend americans you know america from this onslaught we're 22 now in economic freedom and next after the bite of administration is done with us and we're 22 now declined you know under the under the trump years and now we're gonna decline even further and notice and this is why i'm somewhat supportive of of of nikki haley trump you know the santers none of these people care they don't talk about this stuff this is not on their agenda and and people like josh holly and others among the democrats support what biden's doing they don't support it because biden's doing it but they support the essentials behind it where do we find politicians with a free market spirit and understanding to reverse all this stuff who knows i mean sometimes nikki haley sounds like she would do it but i don't know i don't know how to trust anybody in politics today all right wow it's already an hour so let's let's go to your questions there are a lot of questions a lot of you have put a hundred bucks behind your questions so thank you man we've we've passed the 650 goal without me even asking or even mentioning it so thank you to everybody really really appreciate it yeah we should probably go to a thousand for a thousand dollars now since we're at 750 already um we can see if we can make that happen all right let's see we're gonna we're gonna go through the hundred dollar questions uh to start out with okay uh michael says did you see mr beast pay to cure a thousand people blindness and left us in the comment sections were furious that quote blind people had to depend on the charity of billionaires to receive basic services as though receiving help from charities unacceptable demeaning yes i saw that i will i'm thinking of talking about it on tuesday we'll see it sounds like the kind of a clickbaity topic that maybe we'll get a lot of views um but that is exactly right they you see this not just on this you see that they don't like charity um they don't like uh when when bill gates or bezos or any of these guys give a lot of money to charity give a lot of money to the cause they want this they you see they demand this help by right they demand that this be done because it it is it is moral and it it is required of you to do it and given that this money should be taken from the billionaires it shouldn't be up to them to decide when how much what to do so um you know the whole altruistic attitude is if you're helping somebody and you're benefiting like mr beast i assume is benefiting because that video where he helped these people has been watched i don't know 40 million times and he's probably got advertising on it or whatever or just increases the values brand so clearly mr beast is making money off of the contributions that he's making good for him that he's found a model to do this by helping people and making money for himself how how much better does it get but that's exactly what altruism rejects it's exactly what can't and augustine comped the philosophers reject altruism must be done out of a sense of duty altruism must never be tainted by a sense of you benefiting from it it must never be tainted by a profit motive by something you get from the action that you take if you're going to feel better because you provide the bum with some money it's not moral anymore because you're feeling better if it's going to make you happy to help your cousin who you like it's not altruistic it's not moral therefore it must be rejected altruism to be moral must hurt and since entrepreneurs don't like hoods since even mr beast doesn't like to hood himself well they have to be forced to do it it's the only way to create the hood it's it's duty for duty's sake and it's pain it has to be painful it has to place you in a worse situation than you were before otherwise it's not a sacrifice and what they really want is self-sacrifice they care less about the benefits to others they don't care about blind people altruists don't they just care about you not suffering they just care about you not hooting it is a disgusting evil ideology that is driven by hatred again charity is wonderful voluntarily helping other people and you find a way to benefit from it financially otherwise it doesn't get any better than that it's great i mean it gets better than that but you know it's it's a good thing but the fundamental here is is yeah i think one of them it says sadistic it's sadism they want to see blood they want to see suffering all right i don't need to talk about tuesday action injections to just take this and use it as a clip i'll let him know he was here earlier i don't know if he's still here uh let's see james with a hundred dollar question the modern american dream is to make so much money you don't have to care about taxes or regulations or who gets elected or crime instead of intellectually fighting bad ideas most successful ambitious people i know try and earn dollars their way past all the bs i think that's right but it's diminishing because at the end of the day life is not just about money and you want to know that you're creating and you're building and you're making the best that you are you know changing the world and that you're you're making the best that can possibly be done and the sad thing is that the regulations the taxes the bs is preventing you from doing that maybe it's not preventing you from making all this money but it's preventing you from achieving the pride and satisfaction by making the best that you can make and it's wasting a lot of your life a lot of your time think about all the time and efforts and resources that you spend on filling out forms and asking for permission on on asking for forgiveness whatever happens to be from your overseers overlords in the bureaucracy so it is unbelievably destructive all this supervision even if you're focused even if you can make as much money as you need and the taxes and everything else won't matter to you anymore you can't live the life that you want to live you waste a lot of it on bs you waste a lot of your time or your lot of your energy on the bs and then you also can't produce the best products that you can't you can't do the best work that is possible to you all right clock young has a couple of hundred dollar questions all right thank you clock this is great all right clock says i recently discovered objectivism through your lectures and it made me experience a lot of rage particularly with my parents for lying to me and in planning irrational anxiety and guilt in me trying to suppress guilt and anxiety consumes too much energy absolutely um and then he continues there is little i resent more than people taking up my energy the christianity i grew up with always made me resent resent and fear morality fear and resentment fear and resentment punishment for stepping out of line versus the prospect of showing me the path to happiness in this life yeah i mean you've nailed it clock and and it's not even that your parents necessarily did this on purpose or knew though what they were doing they or intended i don't know your parents but many parents just do it out because it's the only thing they know the real evil the real bad guys here are the intellectuals the philosophers the preachers the people who who set the cultural standards the people who inculcate christianity into our lives inculcate altruism into our lives and you're absolutely right i mean the amount of wasted energy that we have to consume but just in overcoming the anxiety and guilt that are unearned the unearned anxiety the unearned guilt that is in us because of the way we were raised in us because of the irrationality of the culture i mean it should make you angry now you got to go over the anger because there's some points in the anger right it's done it's over and hey you discovered the truth you discovered some better possibility and your energy should be instead of focused on anger it should be focused on whoa there's so much i can do now there's so many possibilities opening to me it should be focused on all the positives that exist because you've just discovered objectivism because you've just discovered meaning in your life you've just discovered a purpose and you've just discovered the possibility of happiness that's where all your energy should go into and the past you know yes you have to work in suppressing and but you got to just get rid of it you've just got to get over it and you've got to be ruthlessly focused on the future ruthlessly focused on making your life the best it could be and to the extent that you've got this hangovers from from the past from the bad ideas that you carried you got to find ways to get rid of it and you know therapy or just through introspection or philosophical study or through you know again psychological therapy you gotta get rid of that anxiety and guilt because it'll only slow you down hold you back from the potential of living the best life that you can live all right thank you clock really really appreciate $200 that's that's fantastic i am so glad that you discovered objectivism because of the show it makes me so happy to hear stories like that uh and to know that what i'm doing you know really is having an impact out there in the world again i can measure stuff by subscribers by income by all these things but at the end of the day the most important thing is how many how many lives are being touched how many lives are being changed by these ideas and by by the show and uh i don't know i i i don't know how to measure that there is no measure to that but it gives me an enormous amount of satisfaction that there's so many of you out there by the way those of you beginning your journeys in objectivism first of all focus on inrand let it pick up but you in terms of applying the ideas to your life i mean i i did a whole series on the virtues i've done and of course i've done a whole series on living uh you know uh taking objectivism and applying it to your life so uh uran's rules for living i think it's called right urans rules for living i did that last year um but yeah but first consume the linear peak off material and inrand material and there's so much other good stuff out there so much good material out there um this is the time to be coming into objectivism there's just a and and by the way one of the sponsors of today's show is the inrand university where you can you can study this and you can study it in depth and you can really get an understanding of these ideas and uh inrand university university dot inrand dot org you can take life classes you can audit uh from from some of the best teachers of objectivism um teaching today i think the best teachers of objectivism teaching today um and uh suddenly even if just as an auditor once you've consumed the inrand and linear peak off stuff this is where you should be going to really go deep into gaining into gaining an understanding of inrand's philosophy all right michael hundred dollars he says i don't think people who advocate antitrust law and regulations are necessarily evading you don't have to evade to have low self-esteem to think you can't make it on your own in a free marketplace often you can have perfectly honest mis-evaluations of yourself but most of the people advocating for this are not people in the marketplace people in the marketplace often support this and i agree with you in supporting it it's often just from a place of low self-esteem and fear but the reality is that the people advocating for this are intellectuals law professors politicians historians economists people who know know or should know and the evasion is about the should should know the destructive nature of antitrust should know how leaving the market free of this kind of arbitrary power lusting power conceit power enticing laws is a recipe for innovation and growth and success and indeed the periods in which these laws are not applied stringently are not applied ruthlessly other periods are some of the greatest innovation we've seen in this country and and and the building out of some of our greatest most successful companies that have done more to enhance human life than any others all right liam fifty dollars all right we're at seven hundred and fifty five dollars so if we went to a thousand dollars that's two forty five we might be able to do it i don't know we'll see liam says matt welch has gone fourth theocratic fascist authoritarian lately why is the daily wire permitting this type of rhetoric on their platform well ben Shapiro soon turn on and reign in his medieval christian colleagues like he did with steven crowder i don't think so i don't think so i mean i think this is the nature of the daily why i i think you give them too much credit look at the end of the day you know while i like ben Shapiro and everything if he wants to be consistent with his jewish orthodoxy it's not pro-liberty and it's not pro-capitalism and it's not pro-ultimately reason and you know ben Shapiro is in a tricky situation because my guess is that many of the listeners to daily wire are not too happy with jews and i think i think ben Shapiro has to cater to the christian to the christian right and he caters to christian right by having people like matt welch and others working for him and not reigning them in and i'd be shocked if he's reigned in so no you know when it comes to family values when it comes to so much of what matt welch stands for i think ben Shapiro holds to that and is ben Shapiro really opposed to trying to impose those family values on people if you really push ben clearly is against abortion right he wants to force the you know anti-abortion laws on the entire country well i mean could we could we find some other pro-family laws that he might support that matt welch would come up with is there that much difference between matt welch and ben Shapiro on these issues on these family cultural type issues i mean my guess is that ben Shapiro is better in economics but on culture i'm skeptical so i don't think there's that much disagreement inside the daily wire about these issues this is the thing that the religious right religious being jewish christian whatever the religion in muslim by the way the religious right is ultimately anti-liberty it has to be anti-liberty its religion will demand it it might not come out now it might not come out immediately it might about to be the first thing they want to tackle but the logic of it necessitates that ultimately ultimately they're going to be anti-liberty so does it surprise me that matt welch has become more theocratic no not at all they all are you'd have to not take after you'd have to not take your religion seriously to avoid theocratic fascist authoritarianism and at the end of the day they take their religion seriously we have a lot of super chat questions so there's plenty of opportunities still to intervene the show is going to be close to two hours just because of the number of questions feel free to jump in with more but let's make it twenty dollars or more um no five ten two dollar questions please just because we're limited on time um let's see ryan so we're doing twenty dollar plus questions hi ryan i had an original idea that the speed of technological innovation could eventually outpace the state's ability to regulate it like an unstoppable wave of new solutions to life do you agree it is possible i mean libertarians have argued this for a long time i i remember going to silicon valley trying to raise money for the iron man institute and you know libertarian entrepreneurs tech guys would tell me we don't need ideas what we need is just better innovation bet technology is going to overtake it and they thought crypto would do it they thought bitcoin would do it they thought all kinds of things would do it distributed networks would do it you don't have a full appreciation for what real political power can do and to what extent it can shut you down and how far governments are willing to do to go in order to do it when they're inspired to do so and how many people are willing to kill and how many how much property they're willing to destroy just look at what you know putin is doing right now in ukraine to get a sense of what governments are willing to do what power lusters are willing to do in order to get their way so i don't think so i don't think technology can keep i mean technology constantly is getting ahead of regulations you know this in finance every time there's a new regulation of finance they find a loophole and they find a way using some technology some innovation but that every time you do that that consumes energy it consumes energy that could have been used for something more productive somewhere else and at the end of the day it all creates perversions and distortions that the government will ultimately come down and and and crush you on so no i think it keeps going ubo one partially by compromising with governments ubo one partially by accepting regulations so yes you're going to have cases where things move forward usually through some kind of compromise but can we become free just through technology no we can become richer by technology keeping one step ahead of regulations we can become better off human life can become better in spite of slow shrinkage of freedom but at the end of the day if that shrinkage of freedom grows so much goes to a point and ubo could be shut down tomorrow by government if they wanted to right ubo one for a variety of reasons that but it's all the question of how adamant and how serious the government is about applying its power so no there's no technological solution the solution has to be ideas and for example ubo won the battle of ideas it convinced the public that it was good for them and they put the pressure on politicians to give in not every tech company can do that and indeed in a world that we live in today so many of us hate tech different type different tech companies by an mcdaniel how do i send christian a suggestion for short video to make um i would say send uran at uranbookshow.com the email with the suggestion and i'll forward it to christian i don't have right here uh in my fingertips his email but just send it to me and i'll forward it to yield 25 hi uran perhaps you have addressed this question before but what was caused gas prices to increase recently after their initial went down uh as the onset of winter so you know gas prices there's a lot of things that determine gas prices um i haven't i haven't tracked the correlation between all prices but usually gas prices go up when all prices go up all prices could go up because of uh would you supply one of the reasons all prices went up recently after they first went down is because when china opened up the assumption was that there was going to be a significant increase in demand for oil from china at the same time uh the the uh what do you call it um opac which opac plus they call it which includes russia said they would not increase the amount of oil they could use so you've got somewhat capped supply and increased demand which would cause prices to go up you've also got all kinds of issues in the united states with refining capabilities because the government and we uh you know local government state governments control uh the all companies abilities to build refining capacity to build refiners um what happens is that not enough refining capacity is being built even though all companies would like to invest in refining capacity they don't because government stops them so again this is not capitalism this is government and that has shrunk the amount of refining capacity in the united states so if you get one refiner kind of going into maintenance mode or having a problem prices are going to go up because there's less refined gasoline out there in the marketplace because so there's so many reasons gas prices could be going up and all of them are consequence of uh government intervention imagine if we had a true free market in in oil exploration globally and in overfining and in oil transportation and globally imagine if the the the blend of gasoline that you have in california and in many other states was not determined by the state but determined by market supply and demand prices of gasoline would be so much lower than they are today you know it's hard to believe how cheap gasoline could become in a true free market but we don't have one now let's assume that all the oil companies got together and raised the price of oil which they haven't zero evidence to suggest they have and they couldn't because there's too many of them and there's too much competition globally and so on but imagine they did imagine they raised prices for all of us in gas of gasoline so what what right do you have to a particular price of gasoline what right do you have to use force on those companies to make them change their mind even if they did collude so what I think they should have every right to collude I don't think it's sustainable I don't think it's good business practice I don't think they can hold the collusion but you know opaque colludes nobody minds because it's governments doing it why governments a lot of collude and not businesses I think they should be allowed to but I don't think they will because it doesn't make any business sense to collude and competitor will come up and undermine you always happens all right brownie zero zero three how do how do corporations determine the dividend amount for shareholders um dividends are interesting um basically basically what companies do or the theory is you should pay out a dividend to your shareholders um if and when you don't have anything better to do with the money that is if you have a bunch of cash from your profits that you can invest with a risk adjusted return that is higher than what your stock has then you should invest it in that or raise the stock price because that'll increase profits long-term and it'll raise the stock price anyway um but if you don't then you should pay it out to your shareholders either as a dividend or a stock buyback this is why there's so many stock buybacks because companies don't have better investment opportunities now dividends though a tricky because what actually happens is at some point a company starts paying a dividend usually it's because it has cash that it doesn't have good investment opportunities for but then the market doesn't like it when you start paying dividends stop paying dividends change the amount up down up down it wants steady so businesses are then encouraged to basically pay a steady dividend a dividend that increases a little bit over time or steady over time but it's not jagged and it's not up and down constantly and then what companies sometimes do is if they have some extra cash they'll pay a special dividend or because capital gains attacks that are lower rate than dividends they'll do a stock buyback instead of paying out the dividend I've got a paper on this that I wrote decades ago on why companies change their dividends but too technical to really get into if you're interested you can ask me again but companies use dividends basically to signal future prospects they raise dividends when they think when when they want to tell their shareholders yeah prospects are good for the future they lower dividends when they say we're going to be future is going to be tight future is going to be difficult and and lowering dividends is perceived by the market is a very bad sign so the signaling works but they they they should be paying I mean when they have cash in the bank they should think okay what if this can I invest at a higher rate of return than what my stock is generating that should be invested what if it cannot that needs to be returned to shareholders in one way or another okay Catherine says we bank stocks are dividends for prime stocks and common stocks calculated the same or differently a dividends for prime stocks and common stocks they calculated the same but I but I don't think the dividend yield is going to be the same I'm not sure what the question is Catherine you're going to have to give me more specificity William a question should I private business accept subcontracted work like a tender from a government is this corrosion or not like Lockheed roads etc no I you know I don't think it's I don't think it's corrosion I think depending on what you're doing for the government it's probably okay you know somebody has to build the roads and the government is the only one building the road so if you're a contractor and use you sign up to build the roads and the government pays you I don't see anything wrong with that if you're a defense contractor that's fine you know if you are actively being hired by the government to violate people's rights I'd say don't do it don't engage in activity that is legal but rights violating just because you're under contract with the government Rob asked does democracy inevitably create growing government power and interference perhaps because most people aren't politically engaged and vote for whatever promises them more goodies yes I mean democracy is corrupting this is why the founders of America created a representation of republic separated separated the the voters from those who actually make decisions and created all kinds of checks and balances not to give too much power to those who make decisions so you know the founders created a system that was purposefully trying to be not democracy so that you wouldn't get this kind of corruption right I mean what's the joke democracy is tools and a sheep deciding what's for dinner right so majority so what you want to do is explain that whole parts of human life are not available for voting on outside the realm of politics and therefore democracy doesn't apply to them and that democracy or more always always democracy should only be applied to electing those representatives whose only job is to protect rights at least that's the that's the idealization of what the what the founders had in mind William has another question let me rephrase one of my values let me rephrase one of my values is my customer I don't find a government a customer so is it morally fine to not trade with the government or build their weapons or something yeah I think it's morally fine not to do it I think it morally is fine to do it in in certain circumstances the government can be your customer if if if you're building a product that the government monopolizes like construction of roads or weapon systems Stephen thank you appreciate the support okay what did what did here I saw something from Catherine do prime stockholders do better do better dividends per stock than common stockholders I think it would depend I don't think there's a rule that says one or the other and I don't know that you I don't know exactly what you mean by prime stockholders they are preferred stockholders they're common stockholders I'm not sure what prime stockholders even is I should know this stuff right because so each share of common stock is entitled to one vote yeah that's common shareholders I don't think there's any difference between prime and common prime holders means collectively prime collectively prime in any affiliate of prime who own any common stock there's only common stock and preferred stock there's no such thing as prime stock it's not a separate stock category there's no separate category called prime preferred it depends on the contract I mean preferred um often gets higher dividends but not always it depends on the specifics of the contract remember stocks preferred common all contracts and and they can have different terms different companies different terms uh Jason what are some key steps that Europe might undertake if it were to partially privatize its healthcare system do you think a free market model of health care might include policies charge this percent of one's income no I mean why so I think what most European countries need to start doing is expanding those parts that are private so even the UK has a private private dimension to its healthcare system what they need to do is start you know expanding that out you could you could take how would you do it practically how would you shift I mean I think you would start shifting certain um services that their socialized healthcare system provides to the private sector and ask people for those services to get insurance so you would have like like Medicare right now you would have a two tier system you would have a system um where you provide socialized healthcare for basic services and then you could get you could buy private insurance for anything in addition to that start getting people used to buying insurance then you could shift the basic services stuff instead of um you could give people uh basically a voucher to purchase it so the government would use tax money to then you would give every citizen a voucher to go and buy insurance and that way you would privatize the entire system because everything now would be insurance but some of the insurance would be subsidized by the government and then that subsidy would be reduced every year would be less and less and less and at the same time you would have to sell the hospitals and and uh uh you know sell the various clinics and the whatever it is that the government owns would be sold into private hands but but what you really want to do and what the United States doesn't have what the US needs to do is build a robust competitive individualized insurance system insurance um industry and I think the voucher system is the way to do that without disrupting too much and without putting an extraordinary financial burden on the individuals who are used to just getting it for free so for now they won't get it for free but they will get it it won't cost them anything at least for the first 10 years and then you slowly phase it out or something. The master with the left's arguments becoming more and more wacky could we see a rise in religion as uh the right who has their parent voice of reason yes I think that's absolutely likely to happen um I think you will see a rise in religion now it's interesting that we are seeing a decline in religion for now but I I think I think over the long run I think you will see an increase in religion people need answers people need some kind of values and the left provides them with nothing and and I think the the right through religion provides something and I and I do think you'll see more and more people attract it to some form of religion some form of what what Leonard Peacock called an M2 a miss integration an integrated system that's integrated around the wrong thing whether it's the nation whether it's the race whether it's religion and I think in America it's likely to be religion and country flag and cross all right let's go for the uh five ten two dollar questions we'll do those quickly um and we'll call it an eight or an afternoon in my case all right Frank says socialism for the rich capitalism for the poor representative Jim McGovern said when Republicans passed a resolution to denounce socialism is he right well there's elements of that I don't think it's socialism for the rich but there's definitely an element of socialism for the middle class you've got Medicare which primarily benefits the middle class you've got Social Security which primarily benefits the middle class you've got a lot of programs in the government and the things that are untouchable that basically represents massive redistributions to the middle class not to the poor it's not to the rich the rich it doesn't Social Security doesn't matter to the rich Medicare doesn't matter to rich but the middle class it matters a lot and that's Washington is geared towards socializing any pain any costs to the middle class because they're the ones who vote and they don't mind raising the burden on the rich they don't mind raising the burden on the poor but what they really care about is the middle it's democracy gone crazy Michael H you on you should join your discord it's pretty interesting and it would be cool to interact with your audience don't interact enough with my audience come on people I'll join the discord channel but I'm a little worried about what I'll find it I don't know know it's time people it's just it's just life is limited limited there's only so many hours in a day the discord channel is for you guys to interact with one another but it's it's just how much time do I have is Stephen Hicks a good philosopher he he he is I think some of his work on on postmodernism some of his work on I think he explains a lot of concepts pretty clearly I don't know I'm not a philosopher I'm not evaluating him qua philosopher and what yeah I mean I I his work for the Atlas Society you know what I think about Atlas Society I think that speaks of itself but in terms of his other stuff yeah I mean I I think a lot of what he's done is he's done some good stuff all right Liam says can could you reach out to Matt Walsh for a debate I seriously think he's arrogant enough to do it yeah at some point we'll try to do a debate with Matt Walsh that's a good idea I mean I need a forum I need somebody to pay his fee I mean I I think bitch appears like a hundred thousand dollars who knows what Matt Walsh is gonna ask for a debate a bit of trivia it was former president Harrison who was part of the GOP who made the Sherman Antitrust Act into law the parties are similar yes and it was passed through the Republican Congress Harper Campbell is there naturally a lot of pressure from reality for people to get more rational over time even if they don't come into contact with objective ideas there's there's a yes survival forces people to at least be rational when it comes to making a living at least if they're not in academia or something like that but yes there is a there is the need to survive the need to make a living is a force that you know that exerts pressure on you to at least be somewhat rational in certain aspects of your life it's but it's not all inclusive and it's not it's not in every aspect of your life just in certain aspects don't count on that Michael says can you explain how banks worked prior to the Fed I heard they printed their own cash and there was something called wildcat banks I understand the gold standard but how did the system function I mean that's a long explanation but the short version is you would you would you had gold you would take your gold to the bank you would deposit it at the bank and they would issue you bank notes which is currency which is the dollar bills in exchange for the gold the gold was every ounce of gold was worth x amount of dollars and there was a there was a there was a set rate and then you would use that dollars in other places and let's say you go to amazon and you use your dollars at amazon and then amazon has these bank notes from your bank and they they go to your they go to their bank and they deposit those bank notes at their bank and then amazon's bank sends those notes to your bank and your bank sends amazon's bank the gold so the gold moves where the money moves and yeah a lot of that would be handled electronically in an electronic ledger and so on and there were clearing houses to clear all this but that's basically how the system works banks hold gold or silver as reserve gold ideally and they the gold moves around from bank to bank based on who owns who has the notes who has deposited those notes at any given point of time wildcat banks are supposedly banks that issued notes without having any reserves or having very little reserves but wildcat banks are overstated as they influenced there weren't that many of them it was a it was a very very minor phenomena again if you're really interested in this the people to read are George Selgin and Lawrence White Larry White from George Mason and uh uh Selgin I think is still affiliated with Cato friend Harper I understand your reservations on participating in discord it would be awesome though if you could maybe post some of the articles you read through and research and current events even if you don't have time to chat okay I'll check it out I mean I've been on discord and I find discord very difficult to use and very discombobulated and I need like a tutorial on discord so maybe maybe I'll ask somebody to give me a tutorial on discord clock how come in Europe doctors will make house calls have government regulations and doctors unions destroyed such a common sense service in America yes I mean uh basically insurance companies will pay for it uh the way insurances run because we buy insurance to our employer not privately uh insurance companies can't compete for that kind of service so they can't say oh if you buy insurance for me our doctors actually provide house calls um they're just so many um so many ways in which the system is distorted in the US so it gives you in some sense is the worst of all worlds in some senses you still get better healthcare than Europe in other senses it's it's it's it's it's it's awful and it's all regulations Hopper Campbell says do you believe the objective movements has reached a new level a level you never thought you would see in your lifetime no I can't say I never thought I'd see in my lifetime and I don't know if it's reached a new level yet in many ways I thought the objective movement would be further ahead if you if you would have asked me 10 12 years ago so um I don't know if it's reached a new level I I think it's heading in that direction and I don't know what the levels are you have to categorize the levels more thoughtfully yeah I mean ALU is crucial and important it's an extension of uh you know the objective is graduate center and the objective is uh the ALC the academic center and it's it's a growth and extension of that um so yeah I think I think it's super important I think it's super great I think it's it's a move in the right direction it's what should have been done um but I see it more as an incremental uh and and in a sense it necessitated having enough people who could teach and and and be teaching assistants and so on so the previous steps had to happen for this but it's all incremental all on one kind of path moving into the future I don't see it as a new level necessarily although you could why aren't you giving a talk at okon I'm not I'm not giving a talk at okon why do you assume I'm not giving a talk at okon I have a feeling I'm giving a talk at okon so uh stay tuned um I don't know how much I'm going to be doing at okon there's just the the challenge these days is there's so many qualified people to give talks uh there's so many good intellectuals we want to give lots of opportunities to new people I can't give as many talks as they used to and you don't need it because um because uh I give a talk seven days a week I mean seven times a week seven times a week no wait a second five seven eight times a week I just I talked for an hour today so I'm on stage versus on video what difference is it anyway but I am giving a talk at okon so don't worry um to be determined uh to be advertised it will be in the okon thing is okon streamed yes it is it is live stream but you should come the experience of being there is unique and special and cool and amazing and I will be there for the entire okon so don't worry I will be there I'm haircut it's collusion if they get in a dog room together smoke cigars and eat an evil e laugh yes particularly if the evil e laugh I think even if they do the evil laugh over zoom it counts as collusion Michael says a developer is suing stream steam an online video game store for anti-competitive practices never mind the developer's game was crappy and that's why it didn't make money antitrust even infects gaming yeah it infects every every way every corner of the economy and it's sad that businesses use it um when they can't compete ooh we're not going to make a thousand dollars all right that's that's fine we did very very well today so I'm not complaining uh iamika says did you eat atlas shrugged and like and think oven boil is the hero who you're talking to no oven boil is clearly the villain in atlas shrugged I don't know what that relates to and why that would be a question what's he getting at is he getting at something did I say something wrong um hunter hunter are you still doing the okon scholarship yes so if you want to attend okon and for financial reasons you can't but you would really but you will come and you will attend if you got a scholarship that paid for your tuition I don't think they cover travel expenses but paid for your tuition free free ride in okon then send me an email one paragraph telling me why uh I have to get it this coming week in order for you to get the scholarship so anything that I get this coming week can get scholarships and there are scholarships available this is not a scam so please one short paragraph why you should get the scholarship um the context send it to you on at you on bookshow.com and we're giving out lots of scholarships so do it what have you got to lose and uh you can come to okon so thanks hunter hunter for reminding me that the scholarships are available and you can get them too and you should you should apply for one um theme as this says have you ever thought of doing a ted talk ted has a lot of followers I have it there were a few years there where I really tried to get on ted talks and I was invited to like uh one of the ted smaller regional things and then uh to a ted x I think and then um um somebody had a cancel I had a cancel because of conflict or something I'd love to do a ted x if I was invited to do a ted x I would do a ted x so invite me I can't do it myself I can't I've a you know there's a website where you put in your stuff I think I did that years and years ago but I didn't get I you know there's resistance to having me speak don't know why don't know why but there is all right um thanks everybody we did really really good on the super chat today so I really appreciate all of you guys support um I will tomorrow is a day off no you're on book show tomorrow but we will be back on Monday with our news briefing and on Tuesday with a news briefing and a show in the evening so uh next Thursday I think we've got Jason Crawford from Progress uh from the Progress Institute we'll be talking about progress uh should be a lot of fun it should be really really interesting I think um Jason is writing a book on progress but we'll find out more from Jason um and uh yeah I'll see you Monday don't forget sign up for uh iron rand university university dot iron rand dot org and don't forget to support the show on a monthly basis really really important to me really really important for the show really really important for the future is to get um is to get um monthly contribution so patreon is fantastic subscribe star um you know the goal is to get that up by about 50 percent so anything you guys can do add to what you're already doing or becoming new supporter all of those are fantastic so thank you to everybody thank you to all the superchatters and I will see you all Monday have a good day